“You know, I remember not only the coming of the Germans but also the coming of the Russians. The Poles were overly nicely dressed; they had to have their shoes polished every day. And the Soviet soldiers wore long and dirty army coats, they were unwashed and unshaved and scared of the communist regime… So it was a huge jump from the elegantly dressed Poles to these smudgy Soviet soldiers. I mean it wasn’t their fault but it was a tremendous contrast. And later on, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the contrast was terrible again, because the Germans murdered along the way, literally murdered. When they, for example, captured a whole brigade of the Soviet army, they drove them remorselessly on and on and simply shot the ones who couldn’t go on anymore. They didn’t give the prisoners any food. So this led to a strong resentment towards the Germans in Volhynia. Even those who previously disagreed with the Soviet occupation and might have been pro-German, now turned against the Germans and went into the forests to found the first guerilla groups.”
“The Germans murdered while the Russians didn’t know how to manage an economy. Everybody who owned something nice was a kulak. You didn’t experience this anymore. Later we imitated this in the Republic. We used to say they’re our “model”. As I was against this “model” they sentenced me to seven years of prison in Jáchymov, just because I didn’t want this kind of management.”
“He was Polish and they did everything there, cleaning up, etc… And the Jews went to work there. One day the Jews didn’t come. We saw that the Jews were digging a long ditch on the other side of the town. It was about a hundred, maybe two hundred meters long, two meters wide and two meters deep. They were digging it for roughly half a year. One day, I think it was in July, they took them to this ditch and executed all of the 16 000 Jews on this one day.”
“What changed after the coming of the Russians in 1939?”
“What changed? Everything. I’d say mostly the economic situation. But the cultural life changed as well. Before the Russians we had Czechoslovak schools and libraries. I was lending this library myself for a certain time. We had a quite big library so I was lending it sometimes. All of that changed because a diktat came. You know one day I had to close down the library. A girl came to eliminate the library. But she eliminated rather such authors that she didn’t know, some of them were even pro-socialist. On the other hand, she threw out authors that didn’t have anything to do with Stalinism, like Verne and the like. Well and the library was ruined.”
“When the Soviets returned to Volhynia everybody automatically enrolled in the Czechoslovak army. It was already pre-arranged by the Blaník organization. As most people signed up for the army, the others went as well. For instance, there was a friend in our village who only had one eye. He poked out his eye when he was a kid. However, nobody would tell that he’s got a glass eyeball. When we went to the army and the doctor found it out he started to cry and said that he won’t stay at home when everybody’s going. So the doctor asked him: “what is your profession?” And he replied: “I’m a car mechanic”. But he’d never done it. So they took him and he worked hard and became the chief mechanic in the unit. So happy was he about being allowed to join the army.”
“They were deported to Siberia, I saw it. It was the best and the brightest, for example, a certain Anička Maršová. Her mother died during her birth and her father two years later. She was breastfed by my grandmother. When her father died her uncles got his lands and fields which were some 100 hectares. They sent her off to study. She was about to get married when the Soviets came and deported her to Siberia as a “kulak” (a wealthy landlord or farmer). She didn’t even know where exactly the fields were located. In Siberia she ended badly, she didn’t return to Czechoslovakia anymore.”
Josef Kučera was born on January 22, 1921, in the Czech village of Teremno in Volhynia, which was settled already by his grandparents. A lively Czech social and cultural life flourished in the village. The young Joseph went for the first three years to the village school and later on transferred to a polish school in the regional capital Luck. Later on, he attended a business school in Luck (till 1939). During the war he rotated through several employment positions. He witnessed and he describes the coming of the Soviets, the impact of it on the economy and culture, the first deportations and restrictions on the freedom of movement. In 1941 after the German occupation, he became a member of the underground resistance group “Blaník” which primarily focused on the transfer of intelligence information and the secret listening to radio broadcasts. In 1944 he joined the Czechoslovak army corps in Rovno like another 12 thousand Volhynian Czechs. He recalls the enthusiasm with which the Czechs were enrolling. He served as signalman. He fought in the battle at Dukla, at Liptovský Mikuláš and at Žilina. The war ended for him in Hulín. After the war he briefly served in Žatec (Žatec, Postoloprty and Počerady), then he was demobilized and by the end of 1945 he moved to Brno. In 1947 he opened up a cafeteria which was called “Cafeteria of the Legions”. In 1955 he was arrested, tried and sentenced to seven years of prison for treason, espionage and the violation of the state secret. In 1960, after five years in the Jáchymov prison, he was released. He later lived and worked in Brno in a wine cellar. In the nineties he contributed to the renewal of the Czechoslovak Legionary Community. He was shortly its president before he had to resign for health reasons. He is a member till today. Josef Kučera passed away on September, 9th, 2015.
